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The video of a starved polar bear roaming a barren stretch of land, rummaging for food and finding absolutely nothing palatable to consume, has been going viral over the Internet for the past few days. Filmed in the Arctic summer and uploaded on 5th December by biologist and wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen along with his entourage of filmmakers from the conservation group Sea Legacy, the video is much more than just a ‘gut-wrenching’ film about an otherwise fluffy beast succumbing to its fate.
While the state of the global climate is steadily degrading, some parts of the world are especially sensitive to this destructive alteration. One of them is Baffin Islands in Canada’s Arctic region, which is also the location in the video. “When scientists say bears are going extinct, I want people to realize what it looks like. Bears are going to starve to death,” Nicklen told National Geographic (NG) about his purpose behind capturing the weak animal. “This is what a starving bear looks like.”
If Nicklen’s act of simply videographing the bear and making no effort to feed comes off as insensitive, we should know that a polar bear requires over 400 pounds of seal meat for a single meal – a quantity humanly impossible to carry around. ‘During summer months, it’s not uncommon for polar bears to go months without eating while they wait for Arctic ice to solidify,’ NG reported.
Narrowing the focus of this article to India, one of the major polluters of the world, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) India has got some revelations to make through its researches. Economic Times that reported that, according to CDP India, as an emerging economy, India’s greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise by as much 85%. As the third largest emitter in the world, India accounts for 6.65% of global emissions. Indian industries and businesses need to step up their efforts. In the light of Paris Agreement of which India is a part, industrial units in energy-intensive sectors such as aluminum, cement, and textiles have reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emissions. This has resulted in a 1.93% reduction in India’s greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Masood Mallick, managing director, Environmental Resources Management India that partnered with CDP India for the 2017 report on climate change, it is the government that needs to start seriously conveying the national climate plans to India Inc. Discussions on mechanisms to allocate and track emission reduction goals across the economy require taking place, he told ET.
Although we, as common citizens, might have little control over the country’s policy decisions on climate change, the video shared by Nicklen is a call for urgent help to save all life on the planet. As responsible citizens, and more importantly, responsible inhabitants of the world, we must start doing our bit through managing by ourselves our domestic garbage, preferring public transport to reduce the emission of toxic gases through countless private vehicles, avoiding wasting food, and saving water. Wasteful human habits have certainly grown exponentially to prove fatal for the other, innocent dwellers of the planet. It is indeed gut-wrenching to say this, but we all might share our fate with the unfortunate beast filmed in the video if we do not take urgent steps ourselves towards co-existing sustainably.
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